


Canaries of the Fortuitous Coalmine

by InternAmelia



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4265115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InternAmelia/pseuds/InternAmelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fanventure in which four dead trolls battle against a SGrurb session for the chance to live again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End Of It All

Chapter One: The End of It All

 

The Vast Glub was not as the name hinted. Not in the slightest. The Vast Glub sounds like the cry of an iceberg as it topples to the sea: harsh, cold, and quiet. For Bereni Timaha, the pulse of psychic energy that exterminated her race was not any of these things. It was a sun exploding in her skull, dazzling her pupils with unholy light before leaving her to gargle in her own olive green blood. It was warm, salty and wet, with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth armageddon could summon. The Glub was one final, bloody yelp of incoherence before the long dark.

She did not expect death to be quite this dark. As a mostly nocturnal species, trolls are used to living under the shadow of night, but this was something else. Nightime is the absence of light, but death is the absence of everything. There were no moons leering overhead, no lusii tucked in pockets of black. There was nothing.

Having no idea whether it was truly her final curse to languish in the eternal black, Bereni was still somewhat startled to find a light weaving toward her. Time seemed to vanish into the abyss, so she could not tell you when she first saw it, or how long it took to approach her. All she could say was that it entranced her; a golden light tracing through the darkness  like dandelion fluff on a breeze.  

“ Hello?” She called out. It did not feel like she spoke, she didn’t even know if she truly had a body in this deathly netherworld, but Bereni knew that she somehow sent a message into the void.

“ Wait.” The light hissed, its voice sounding like a thousand snakes scraping together.

Wait she did. Bereni watched the orb twine its way toward her, and as it got closer she made out more detail. The orb’s  center was creamy white, as if a cluckbeast’s egg had been split in two, but it branched into slender golden filaments around the outside. When the orb was close enough to highlight her features in its gentle glow, pinched eyes and straight nose giving way to a strong chin, then again it spoke.

“ Bereni Timaha?” Its hissing voice whispered. Filaments of gold waved rhythmically behind it.

“ Present.”

“ You were victim to an untimely death.” The orb wavered on the word untimely, like it was enjoying some grand joke only it understood.

“ Well, I mean no offense, but duh. The Vast Glub killed all trollkind didn’t it?” No response.

“ Would you like to proceed?” It asked.

“ To what?”

“ What lies beyond.”

“ I don’t have much option do I?” The orb dissolved into pockets of sundazzle, undulating around itself, and Bereni could have sworn it was wheezing a chuckle.

“ Do you always answer with questions?” The orb teased. Bereni didn’t bother to answer. After it settled into what resembled its former blob, the orb resumed speaking.

“ There is another way,” The orb didn’t wait for her response this time. “ In a happy chance of fate, there may be a second chance.”

“ I’ll do it.”  Bereni would climb naked over a bed of rusty nails if it made her get another shot.

“ So eager, little troll,” Another wheezing puff erupted. “ There are rules. There is a game of your universe, coined by its recent progenitors as Sgrub, which you must play to return to a state of living. It will not be the same as the original which caused the extermination of your people, however it will not be any easier.”

“ So I play this game and…”

“ And if you win, you live.”

“ What if I lose?”

This agitated the orb. It bobbed, flickered, and light sprung from it it jagged shoots as it proclaimed,

“ If you lose, you return here. There will be no passing on to the regular afterlife, no form of redemption should you fail. There is only you, alone in here, for eternity.”

Bereni didn’t even miss a beat: “ Sign me up.” It was only as the orb jeered a truly unsettling laugh, and began to fade into the murky black, that she began to think of the true consequences.

“ Oh, I forgot to mention,” The orb tittered as it disappeared, “ You’ll be playing with three other trolls as teammates.”

The next thing Bereni knew was a tug in her stomach that meant she was falling.

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

Hitting her head on a prong-basin was not the ideal way for Bereni to wake up. After what felt like an eternity, and yet no time at all, she found herself jerking awake on the floor of her hygiene block; promptly smashing her head on the prong-basin directly over her. While seeing blue dots swirl around her vision, she took the opportunity to quickly curl back up on the floor and collect her thoughts.

Had it all been a nightmare? Had a group of hives in her communal stem thrown a reveling of some sort, and the horrible visions of The Vast Glub all been a substance induced vision? Could the ache in her calcium rods simply be a hangover?

But when she uncurled from her trembling ball, and faced herself in the reflector-pane, Bereni knew she couldn’t delude herself any further. She was coated in crusted blood. It was caked on in olive blobs, hardened like it had been there for days. Smeared over her face, her nose, her chin, her blood was like some demented war paint. It also had dribbled from her ears into her hair, congealing the strands of midnight black around her face into stick straight bundles. She might as well have wallowed around in a culling field for the look of her clothes.

Bereni handled it the best way she knew how: Shrieking, stripping naked as if her clothes were on fire, and proceeding to scrub every inch of her shell as if her life depended on it.  Her hair was ridiculously difficult to clean. She’d always been proud of how it fell almost to her shins in a graceful swish, but because of that scouring her blood from it was like looking for a needle in a dozen, beautifully soft, haystacks. The smell was the worst part, clawing up her nose and reeking of dull copper.

Now, Bereni was not a neat freak. After using her wardrobifier to supply her with a fresh set of garments, and lacing her hair usual, intricate braid, she didn’t bother scrubbing out any of the blood she smeared over the rest of her hive. Her body, however, was her pride and joy and she took good care of her best feature.Vanity came naturally to most trolls, even more so to Bereni Timaha.

She wandered to her respiteblock, taking time to appreciate the sheer amount of mess she made during her deathrows. Truly, it was impressive how high on the walls she had managed to smear fluid. But, there was no time to gawk. She had to find her lusus and figure out exactly what this ‘SGrub’ game entailed.

“ HEY!” She called, hoping that would be enough to get the ol’ bird’s attention. No response. Having no idea how The Glub affected Lusii, Bereni wondered if maybe hers had flown outside to get away from Bereni’s obnoxious dying sounds. After several minutes of terse silence, she traipsed to a window and flung it open to look for the missing guardian.

Her ensuing gasp of shock flowed from the realization that this was not her hive stem.. From every vantage point, the land that stretched its way into the distant fog was not even Alternia. Deep green earth rolled out into valleys and ridges, streaked with colors of the hemospectrum in the form of rivers, forests, and other wilderness. Clouds rippled in multiple hues, blowing across the pastel purple sky in glowing sheens of color. In the distance, Bereni could make out shaded mountains, with clear silver words plastered across them which read:

“ LAND OF SECRETS AND HUE.”

Well, screw that. Bereni yanked the window closed just as quickly as she had opened it, and collapsed onto the edge of her recuperacoon. This couldn’t be possible. You can’t just pluck a hive from the communal stem; building’s don’t just disappear! How would- why- ugh!

As Bereni faced a minor mental collapse, she noticed a crude booklet on her four legged- sit device. It looked as if had been thrown there casually, like someone had placed it down after reading, but Bereni knew with all certainty she had never read, let alone seen it before. Mostly because of the crude, handwritten letters sprawled on the front: _‘HEY! YOU! YES YOU!’_ and then a little below that, in neater script, _‘ An undead trolls guide to modified SGrub’._

“ Oh, great, a handbook I have to read.”  There was only mild sarcasm in that sentence. Bereni hustled to where the book rested and picked it up. Her fingers ran along its spine, feeling the cheap, paper binding and inspecting it’s yellowed pages. She flicked it open to break its stiffness a little, and noticed how none of the pages seemed printed. The letter sizes, colors, and even fonts varied from sentence to sentence, giving it a cramped, untidy feel. Shuffling to the beginning in hopes of finding a table of contents, Bereni was relieved to find there was at least some form of order to the jumble.

The book was split into five sections: Introduction, Objectives, Troubleshooting, Modifications, and Teammates. Bereni had her work cut out for her. She couldn’t read in the recuperacoon, slime and all not being the best for books, but she nestled into a pile of relatively clean clothes that had been fermenting in a corner and set to absorbing all the book could tell her. The logical thing would be to begin at the beginning, but Bereni told herself she didn’t give a shit and skipped straight to the interesting bits. Modifications caught her attention, what on Alternia could that mean?

In less than an hour, Bereni was ready to give up on Modifications. The phrasing was complex, the logic fuzzy at best, and a whole lot of terminology was thrown in that she was not equipped to handle. The section seemed to be detailing alterations made from the original SGrub format so that it could better fit the circumstances, but then again Bereni doubted any information gleaned from these pages. Something about it just seemed fictitious.

So she gave up on her renagade chapter selection, and flipped back to the opening pages. Surprisingly, she was greeted by something rather clear. ‘ FUCKING PANIC’ was spelled out in sopor slime green, a wobbly hand having scrawled them over the first leaf. Under that, the real text began in a bizzar purple.

_“So, you’re in the medium! Congratulations! For wigglers out there who don’t know what the medium is, it’s your own personal planet to do with as you please! Haha, just fucking with you. It’s a planet all right, tucked into the nice little nook crease of space where we were able to dump you chumps. Each one of you has your own, “Land of fuckery and shitfarts” for example, is probably the one of whoever’s reading this right now. You’ve got to figure out what your mission is on your shitty ground clump, and then complete the mission. LIKE A FUCKING VIDEO FUCKING GAME. See objectives on page 3tfg8 for more information on Personal Quests.”_

This was going to get annoying really fast, however Bereni didn’t have much of a choice considering her predicament. She spent hours pouring over the handbook, some sections even more vulgar than the previous had to be read two or three times. She practically bathed in foreign terms like alchemiter, build grist, gates skaia, and way too many more.  She even tried to understand what she was reading! The attempt wasn’t altogether successful, but she came out of the tail end of it with some idea of their overall objective, and a much clearer idea of how difficult it was going to be to obtain.

The technicolor clouds outside seemed to reflect the time of day, even if the sky never moved from its pastel purple. Through her reading, the rotating spew of colors mutated from warmer colors, into the soft, dusty blues she associated with morning. When Bereni was finally reaching the final section, Teammates, the clouds were into deep blues and purples. She was surprised to find the last section only one Page long. The writing was neat, black, and presented her with four trollian user-handles.

_“ groomingAcolyte_

_amenableConnoisseur_

_circumventingGardener_

_tenaciousGlider ”_

Crestfallen, but only slightly, Bereni didn’t recognize any of them. So, none of the trolls in her social sphere got another chancr. Luckily, Bereni hadn’t made any romantic commitments outside of a few flings in the red quadrants, so she wasn’t heartbroken over the loss. You needed to be callous to avoid heartbreak in Alternia.

The last handle on the list was her own. Eyeing her husktop across the room, Bereni figured the next step would be to reach out to one of the other players, but which one? If there were any highbloods she was supposed to be cooperating with, they may get upset if she didn’t contact them first out of respect. Then again, if she did contact a  high blooded troll, they may be angry with her for going above her station. The low bloods might resent her for being higher than they are, but would the chance for second life even be offered to lowbloods?  Bereni frequently cursed her position on the hemospectrum, as midbloods were either ostracized or welcomed on the whims of the other castes. She eyed the trollian handles carefully, looking for hints as to the user’s position on the hemospectrum.

The word Acolyte stuck out. Wasn’t that a religious word? Indigo bloods were notoriously unstable, and even more notoriously they welcomed a superstition of clownish proportions. Of course, it wasn’t Bereni’s place to judge her betters, however she decided that this would be the troll she reached out to first. Better to be safe than sorry. Bereni seized her husktop, and took a deep breath. She paused a minute to reflect on how strange it was she was able to breathe at all anymore, the true strangeness of her situation began to sink in. She quickly returned to trolling who ever was on the other side of GroomingAcolyte’s handle. Her olive tint looked strange next to the indigo color of the responder ( which also confirmed her suspicions)

 

tenaciousGlider (tG) began trolling groomingAcolyte (gA)

tG: Hello? Someone, on the other side of this could you please respond.

gA: YO, fellOw undeader.

tG: Umm, yo?

gA: Haha, the hOmie is dOwn with the lingO. Hey, yOu sniff Out the deal with aC yet?

tG: No I don’t believe, I did.

gA: Thats fuckin funny. Let me knOw when yOu comprehend the level Of bizarr his being  

here is, because when yOu dO the twO Of us can rOast his ass even more than I mOther 

fuckign did.

tG: I don’t follow.

gA: Well thats fuckin clear gOin by your sOpOr sludge blOOd, middy. Only thOse high

enOugh to cOmprehend the miracles listen to the messiahs.

tG: No I meant, I don’t follow what you are saying about aC.

gA: YOu will.

tG: … 

tG:  Umm listen, maybe we got off on the wrong foot. You are clearly my superior in the

blood hue area, but since we must cooperate, to survive then can’t we just do regular “ Hi  

nice to meet you” stuff?

gA: YOu first, greeny.

tG: Thank you; my name is Bereni Timaha, obviously olive blood, female, umm, 7 sweeps.

gA: Eygann Saxdai, a mirthful mOtherfucker Of the ingO schOOl, nOOk nOt bulge, 7 sweep.

gA: Smell ya later greeny, I gOt tO chew Out Our Other insult of a COmpaniOn.

groomingAcolyte(gA) has disconnected from tenaciousGlider(tG)

She was going to be handful. Indigo bloods were always difficult, and this one seemed to relish in being nonspecific. Bereni didn’t even get to half the topics she wanted to cover in that conversation, and the way Saxdai had talked about the other two she wasn’t sue if she wanted to try again.

This pause in thought allowed Bereni to feel the true exhaustion in her calcium rods. Much like she pushed away the thoughts of consequences and the situation, she had been pushing down complaints from her body about how truly  awful dying was. Her joints creaked, her nubs barely functioned, and there was a deep, pulsing ache all the way from her feed chute, through her stand-limbs, and back up to her think pan. Bereni throbbed with pain.

Maybe she should take a nap, collect her thoughts a little. She slipped off the clothes she was wearing, and eased her yelping body into the recuperacoon. The gratifying feeling of slime seeping over her validated her decision. A small nap couldn’t hurt, she deserved it anyway.

Bereni had just come back from the dead, after all.  

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

For some reason, there were no nightmares. Bereni’s sleep was instead filled with muddy half thoughts, thick and slow like slime beasts. She couldn’t remember any of it when she woke. And she really didn’t try, for it was plain there were other matters to attend to. Her husktop was lighting up like a tree on twelfth Perigee’s Eve.

She put on some fresh clothes, for the second time that day, and plopped down in front of the minor barrage of trollian messages. Luckily, there were none from Saxdai. While the highblood clearly deserved all of her attention, Bereni’s apprehension about her other teammates had vanished in her slumber. Like her pains, it had been replaced by an eagerness, a hunger for information. She felt fit as a bow-string instrument, and yearned to know more about the mysterious trolls she was partnered with.

The first few messages were from circumventingGardener. To her disappointment, they typed in a dull bronze, lower than her own blood hue by scores. She loathed the idea of associating with someone little better than a peasant, but you can’t luck out and get a forcibly cooperative clown worshipper every time. She looked through cG’s messages, and then began to respond.

 

circumventingGardener (cG) began trolling tenaciousGlider (tG)

 

cG: hey

cG: are you still dead, or whatever?

cG: gA said you were active, so i thought maybe you would wanna hash out some plan stuff.

cG: ok then, just get back two me soon.

 

circumventingGardener (cG) ceased trolling tenaciousGlider (tG)

 

tenaciousGlider (tG) began trolling circumventingGardener (cG)

 

tG: I’m sorry, I was taking a nap. I didn’t get your messages.

cG: were good. man, you were out for a long time though.  did you talk to the juggalo?

tG: If you are referring to Saxdai; who, you know, has a name, then yes.

cG: who else would i bee talking about? wait,

cG: o god.

tG: What?

cG: your one of those mid bloods who just rolls over whenever someone higher even

sneezes in theyre direction arent you? youre going to spend this whole game just kissing Eyganns ass, and treating me and aC like dung even though your no better.

tG: I know my place on the hemospectrum, is that a crime?  I’m not going to prostrate myself at Saxdai’s  feet or anything, but I’m certainly, not going to be getting any grandiose ideas about my own worth.

cG: *sigh* great. at least your self righteous on top of that. just do me a favor and lay off of aC. the kid is barely even five sweeps, if that. got culled a while ago. he doesnt need you AND the indigo blood hating on him.

tG: …

tG: Why is it that I seem to be butchering every conversation in this circle? And what is it about the fourth player that has both of you that I’ve spoken with so uptight? Can’t we just do names like civilized trolls?!

cG: well

cG: your better than the clown so far. at least you give a shit about getting along. and as for aC, hell tell you himself.

cG: my name is Cirkin Vadova. im a male.

tG: Female, Bereni Timaha. 7 sweeps.

cG: im 7 ½.

tG: Interesting. So you wanted to talk strategy?

cG: yup. although you dont make a good first impression, you seem somewhat sane, and also more capable of dealing with me on a similar thought plane. plue we half too work together.  i figured we could come up with some sort of overarching goal.

tG: The handbook; covered our goals pretty specifically…

cG: i meant as a team. i dont know about you, but mines get everyone out alive.

tG: That does seem to be the point, doesn’t it?

cG: yup. so we agree, everyone gets out alive.

tG: Was that even up for discussion?

cG: trust me, it was. talk to aC before we go any further, youll understand. get your kernelsprite prototyped, alchemize some shit, and then start building youre clients hive. your way behind everyone else hear.

tG: Build their, hive?  

cG: i thought you read the handbook. build it to the nearest gate so we can jump between worlds as efficiently as possible. even though weave started in the medium, we need to still be able to hop to our neighbors planets over the campaign. the ‘SGrub’ or whatever is already on youre husktop, just open it and get started.

tG: Must have missed that part. See, we don’t have to be confrontational here. Things can work  

cG: dont paronize me, thatll make this all the more painful. get working, we have time limit.

 

circumventingGardener (cG) ceased trolling tenaciousGlider (tG)

 

What was his problem? She understood her superior being miffed at her, Eygann had every right to detest her olive swill, but with this guy it was like he was waiting for her to stab him in the back. No… the way he talked about amenableConnoisseur, he was waiting for her to stab aC in the back. What was it about this the mysterious aC, practically a wiggler by Vadova’s report, that had everyone so twisted up?

She clicked through trollian to find a few messages that the questionable compatriot himself had sent her.

 

amenableConnoisseur (aC) began trolling tenaciousGlider (tG)

 

aC: Hey!

aC: Wait, was that alittletoo forward?

aC: Ididn’tmeantooffend, ah, can we start over?

aC: Just shoot me a message whenever you feel like it :)

 

She paused reading. Though the messages were dated a few hours ago, the wiggler never disconnected. Odd. He also wasn’t anything special from what she could tell. His words were mustard yellow, higher than Vadova; maybe he was nervous because Eygann engaged him hostily? Cirkin had hinted as much. Bereni knew she’d use the load gaper in her pants if a highblood three sweeps her senior came at her on the offensive. Either way, Bereni got to typing as fast as her prong-shoots would let her.

 

tG: I’m sorry, I was taking a nap and didn’t get your messages. Bereni Timaha, everyone else got the rest of my scoop. How is the game so far on your end?

aC: Hello! I’m Leptus! And, the game, well, ah, ihaventreallygotanythingdoneyet.

tG: Pardon?

aC: You see, I’m your server player. You weren’t awake, I couldn’t connect, and we couldn’t play! Cirkin’s been great about building my hive on this end, but there wasn’t so much I could do about you… :(

tG: Not to worry. I was irresponsible for sleeping while in an unknown environment. It seems we have a time limit, correct?

aC: Yup!

tG: That’s not very exciting news,,

aC: Oh. letmetryagain.

aC: Yup. :/

tG: Now, is the server connection all we needed to sort out?

aC: No.

tG: Would you like to tell me what it is we need to cover before embarking on this vital mission that could restore our lives?

aC: Not really. But, ah,

tG: But?

aC: The high blood said that if I didn’t tell you she’dhurtmesobad I’d wish I was still dead. I don’t want to repeat thespecifics.

tG: Well spit it out then.

aC D:

aC: I’m, ah, I’mamutation. That’s why I’m dead. Iwasculled for having a, ah, weirdbloodcolor.

tG:...

aC: You really hate me now.

aC: That’s normal. But please don’t yell at me. My real blood color is like a canary yellow, I just type in mustard because it’s safer. Please don’t yell.

tG: …

tG: I need a moment.

 

A mutant?! Bereni found it peculiar enough a fudge blood like Vadova was being offered a second chance, let alone a mutant wiggler with unnatural yellow swill- ugh! She forced her revulsion into a quiet discontent, even though her mind rebelled at even thinking of working with this… abomination. She could see why he died young now; her only wonder was that he escaped culling for even a few sweeps.

 

tG: Listen.

aC: Listening! :)

tG: I in no way am endeared toward your; affliction. However, we have a goal, and you serve a purpose in this escapade. We will not succeed without you. I will accept your presence for these reasons.

aC: Yup!

tG: Still not exciting.

aC: Well, you’re not spewing about how much of an insult I am to troll kind, so I find that a little exciting. Plug in SGrub so I can get building and fulfill my ‘purpose in the escapade’!!

tG: Please, just don’t tell me what to do,,

tG: I’m working on it as we speak.

 

tenaciousGlider (tG) ceased trolling amenableConnoisseur (aC)

 

It seemed Saxdai, as was her right, had already slammed a ramrod of caste hate up the little mutant’s dung-chute. There was no point in Bereni repeating what her superior did. However, she needed to get working on this game. It had been made clear the goals, the rules, and the motive.

Now all there was left to do was play.

 


	2. Playing The Game

Chapter Two: Playing the game

**  
**

Eygann Saxdai looked exactly the same on the outside as she did on the inside. Which is to say, her physical form reflected the mannerisms in which she conducted herself and the beliefs she held. Her outward appearance was not a bunch of internal organs jumbled together and digesting something. That would be weird. But, in a figurative sense, she was identical on the inside to how she was outside: pinched, twisted, and waiting to spring.

And she was tremendously proud of it. When Eygann would apply her mirthful as fuck facepaint every evening, she’d do her best to highlight her snub nose. She would try and brighten her curiously large eyes, trace where her cheeks enveloped her barely visible cheekbones, and see if it was at all possible to draw attention to her thin lips and unbelievably small chin. If she were a lowblood, these features would bring her no end of shame. Labelling herself a walking travesty would be doing a world a favor in those circumstances; however Eygann was pumping indigo through her husk, as high as you can be without getting your nubs wet. Because of her blood status, Eygann’s features were not hideous. No, they were whimsical. They made her even more qualified for the part of a devoted follower of the mirthful messiahs.

For one so uniquely gifted in her visage, you would think she would suffer from true piety. Eygann thanked herself every day for not succumbing to that. Conjuring the image of a True Believer is one thing; it shows all those below you how immersed in your caste you are, and how far above them you must be to Believe so deeply. Truly believing is another entirely. For Eygann, putting faith in anything higher than herself, outside of the public view, was reckless, idiotic, and a symptom of a weakening mind.

If she wasn’t so secure in her positions, she might have a serious crisis after coming back from the dead. Could she be wrong in collecting sacred artifacts as a mere status symbol? However, self assurance was the only friend Eygann permitted in her life; she dismissed any internal questions. This trial by fire, ‘Sgrub or die’, was her caste given right. The dark carnival had no business here, because she deserved to live whether or not she Believed.

And so her first mission, once she had woken from dreams of a floating light jeering at her as she fell through darkness, was to make sure her other teammates understood their place. They were all beneath her, she saw no nautical words or other such symbols of royalty among the trollian handles provided, and she had to make it clear they knew that. Radical ideas might pop into their heads if they thought it was an equal playing field.

Several conversations later, Eygann was glad she had taken the time to investigate. The fudge blood was nothing special, a resentful clod not worthy to lick her nub-drapes. She would let him think he held power for a while, and kill him if he got out of line. That was how you treated lower classes. The greeny, Timaha or whatever, she knew her place. Eygann could appreciate a troll with the proper reverence for the hemospectrum. It was a bit pathetic the way she tried to kiss Eygann’s ass, but that was tolerable. Nothing new, nothing Eygann hadn’t seen a thousand times in her now extinct peer group.

The mutant on the other hand… her fingers twitched into her strife specibus even thinking of him. What cosmic joke was this, that she must cooperate with something so perverse? It was less than troll, barely functional! To top it off, it was sweeps younger than the others. It couldn’t possibly operate on the same level. She made that quite clear to it when it confessed its affliction. Eygann also resolved to kill the mutant whenever the chance presented itself, no matter what she told the other players. A mutation could not be allowed to contaminate their remaining gene pool.

But, musings about blotting out heretical insults aside, it was time to get moving. Eygann needed to start running her copies of Sgrub, and get her position on the chain established. The handbook she found in a pile of honk- horns, or what little she read of it, said she needed the game to advance any further, and Eygann intended to get the furthest of them all.

                                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

circumventingGardener (cG) began trolling groomingAcolyte  (gA)

 

cG: so i spoke two tG. shes getting her copy running and will start building youre hive asap.

gA: I still think it’s a mOtherfukcin insult that Im being cOntrOlled by One Of yOu shit sniffers.

cG: tough. its how the game works. she builds your hive, you build mine, i build leptus’s, we all get each other too the next gait.

gA: And then what nOOk hOle?

cG: and than your free to disappear into whatever bat clop insanity im sure your planet is full of. ewe have to beat the quest there before we kill the black chess-king, remember?

gA: Im nOt a fuckin idiOt. GO back tO licking the mutant’s bulge and stOp cOmmanding yOur betters.

cG: jezus, im just trying too get us all out of this! am i the only won concerned about the fact that hour entire race has been wiped out and that we need to beet this game for even a small chance too live?!

gA: PrObably. ‘Cause, the Others aren’t Over-emOtional piss wigglers. I’m playing fOr the mOthercfukin thrills, hOmie. yOu dOwn with the clOwn?

cG: go fuck yourself.

gA: Hmmm, is that a hint Of black flirting I read? Awfully rOmantic Of yOu tO try and fill a pail when yOur whOle race has been wiped off the planet. I cOuld fugink kill yOu fOr that dissrespect but its sO darn DESPERATE I’ll leave yOu tO wallOw in yOur patheticness.

cG:

cG:

cG: just do your quest. build my hive, do your quest. dont talk to me. i cant believe you.

 

circumventinGardener (cG) blocked goomingAcolyte (gA)

 

Oh, this was going to be fun. The dirt-vein couldn’t handle even a few prods, he fucking blocked her for one pail reference! Eygann couldn’t wait to see what happened if she ever really wanted to hurt him.

But, like the siren’s song of a clog fermenting in the load gaper, the SGrub program dared Eygann to stick her talons in and swish it out. She popped each bone cluster, cricked her pan support stem, and arched her stunted sit pole over her husktop before clicking “Run Program”

Holy shit, the fudge blood had one dung heap of a hive. When her screen faded in from black, Eygann found herself looking at the most bleak, uninteresting, four-block cottage Alternia could have offered. There were no horns, no faygo stains expertly placed for maximum class, no origami crowding shelves and spilling off tables. Instead of all these welcoming sights, Eygann witnessed plants, and freaking everywhere at that. Hedges burst from holes in the floor, spider plants lounged in pots, fucking cacti took up at least half the meal block… what a trash pile! At least there weren’t any flowers, or Eygann may have vomited from the sheer lameness. To top it off, the peasant seemed to have a thing for vests. She used the controls offered by the game to throw a particularly ugly plant draped with at least seven different jean vests out a window.

So, Eygann was supposed to build his hive up. Not hard, there seemed to be an easily available build section. Plus, the shining pink gate taunted her from the pale blue sky that graced whatever shitty world the lowblood was stuck in. No mystery there. However, there seemed to be an issue with something called ‘build grist’. Whenever she tried to plop a new floor on top of the pitiful building, it flashed up saying she lacked the grist. The fucking nerve of some programs.

Wait… The grist level rose as Eygann watched it. Slowly but surely, a few more units got plopped in every so often. She toggled around with the view screen, wanting to see if this was Cirkin’s doing. Sure enough, she found what must be him at the source of the build grist. But the image she had been nurturing of a whiny, trillby-wearing, plant ass seemed to be false. For one thing, Cirkin Vadova would be considered attractive by most anyone’s standards. He had a chiseled physique, muscles rolling into other muscles, and those muscles fell underneath an understated nose, strong jaw, and brooding eyebrows. The other thing that disproved her imagined persona was that he was beating the ever living shit out of a series of black tar imps.

 

 

It was only trollian for Eygann to entertain thoughts of a passionate, bloody rivalry upon this brutal sight, but black romance with someone of Cirkin's standing was unclean. It was fit to tease him with as she had done earlier, no more. She simply made note that he had horrible dress sense, and returned to alternating between adding floors on his hive and waiting for grist.

Not too long after she was appropriately bored out of her think pan. Flipping through options of the SGrub interface, she failed to understand most of the tools presented, and was left with a mixture of confusion and mild rage. Swear to honk, if this was all the living world held for her, she’d trigger the next glub herself.

Suddenly a machine larger than her recuperacoon crashed into Eygann’s respiteblock. It looked like a white-black key instrument, except there were too many slots and do-hickeys. After her initial reaction of whipping out the first thing in her sylladex for an attack, ( It turned out to be several sheets of colored origami paper) Eygann noticed large thumpings happening all over her cavernous hive. Who the fuck….

Bereni. Fucking Timaha was in charge of her hive building, she was responsible. Eygann stuffed the origami paper back into her sylladex, and then whisked her husktop over so she could access trollian.

 

groomingAcolyte (gA) began trolling tenaciousGlider (tG).

 

gA: What the ever blOOdy fucknig fuck are yOu dOing tO my hive?

tG: So sorry for the disturbances, but I’m deploying the punch designix, alchemiter, and totem lathe so you can get started alchemizing some gear for your planet. The handbook says we would normally use these things to access the medium, but it cant hurt to use them for other stuff as well.

gA: TrOllian. YOu speak it?

tG: Umm, you read the handbook right? Pardon my criticism.

gA: NO I didn’t read the fugnicki handbOOK. A few pages maybe, but Otherwise nO.

tG: Well, it explained the uses of several, actually all; facets of the modified SGrub game we’re playing. In fact it’s a little bit, of a necessity considering what’s on the line here.

gA: Do you think I’m oblivious to the stakes here, greeny? I know whats gonna happen if we dont win.

tG: …

tG: This is way out of line; and above me an all, but, umm… what happened, to your o’s?

 

Shit. Eygann typed capital O’s to keep the appearance of nonchalance, which a true mirthful one would have, but sometimes she forgot. Better pull rank before the bitch questioned other things about her devotion.

 

gA: Did I fuicking ask fOr a lessOn on religiOn frOm sOmeOne Of yOur lOw ass blOOd sister?

tG: You know, forget I said anything. Just please, it you would be so kind, try and flip through the handbook so you know what’s up. I think these device will be greatly useful.

gA: Yeah, well yOu have shit thOughts. I knOw what I’m dOing.

 

groomingAcolyte (gA)  ceased trolling  tenaciousGlider (tG)

 

Reading the handbook is for wigglers. Eygann knew enough about games that it was clear you had to wing it to win. Whatever these devices were, she could do without them.

Instead, Eygann was going to go kick ass. Cirkin’s grist levels could accumulate some in her absence, then she wouldn’t have to wait so damn long in between builds; she could also explore whatever planet she found her hive landed on, while winning grist for herself. Whipping out a giant, curved paper creaser from her foldingbonekind strife specibus, Eygann headed outside and surveyed her surroundings.

Basking in the dazzling heat and light, she saw the faygo-purple pebbles of ground stretched before her, waiting to be claimed. A desert land, but with the noise of a thousand circuses echoing through the valleys, and beckoning her nearer. Eygann grinned, and saw written in the painfully bright sky

“Land of Tents and Races”.

Let’s go hunt some imp.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

amenableConnoisseur (aC)began trollingcircumventingGardener (cG)

 

aC: I can’t do this!! Imgonnafailweregonnadieitsallmyfault-

cG: whoah there kid. deep breath. what’s up?

aC: Ok.

cG: are ewe breathing normal?

aC: Yes.

cG: now tell me, calmly, whats going wrong.

aC: I read the handbook, that went good. I started buidling Bereni’s hive, that went good except Ibroke a lot of hairbrushes on accident and she got mad at me. She has really pretty hair, did you know?

cG: remember we discussed getting sidetracked, kid?

aC: Right, yes :)  Anway, I was building her hive up tall, and then some of those imp things I saw outside burst in and startedtryingtowreckstuff. Did I tell you they grew horns and weird plant crowns?

cG: my fault. i prototyped te kernelsprite with my lusus and a wreath i had lieing around.

aC: Oh yeah. I need to do that once I find where Tyrarab ended up. Is it true they’realldead :(

cG: sadly wear the only ones the game brought back. but put his body in the kernelsprite, he should be somewear around youre hive. it will bring him back as youre spirit guide thing. but you were saying about your most recent panic bout…

aC: That’s about it. I had to fight a bunch of imps off with a whisk, and since you weretheonlyone being really nice to me I thought Id talk to you!!  

cG: you have a whiskkind strif specibus?

aC: I like whisks :D

cG: your such a funny kid. but, im sorry, its no wonder you got culled. mutant + sweet as all heck = dead.

aC: I know. I had to be really careful to make it as far as I did. Lying that my eyes were just wiggler stuff, that my horns would get darker as I grew up… they caught on by my fifth sweep :( It was super duper scary and then it was dark for a long time.

cG: now were here.

aC: Yup!!

aC: Can you tell me if the vast glub really happened? Bereni said that’s what she died in a bit ago, and Eygann too, but they won’t talk about what it was like. Eygann won’t talk to me at all, but I don’t want her to so that’s okay.

cG: wouldnt no. after my time.

aC: What :O

cG: i dyed before that.

aC: What happened?

cG: ladder fell on me. then i fell on some shears. then when i was trying to get inside to not die i tripped on a root and fell in a thorn bush. i bled out. can we change the subject?

aC: Whoah. Sure, yeah. SorryIbroughtupasoresubject :(

cG: chill dude. anyway, keep doin what yer doing. ill start building eww up in a bit, but first i have to clear out some of these imps and get her royal painness grist to work with. k?

aC: Will do!!

cG: just dew me a favor and dont hyperventilate or anything before then.

aC: :D

 

amenableConnoisseur (aC) ceased trollingcircumventingGardener (cG)

  
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